


A God of Cold Journeys

by FourthAxis



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A Halloween Special, Creature Fic, Dead People, Demons, Ghosts, Horror, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2538578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourthAxis/pseuds/FourthAxis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Will couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at many people in their eyes with what often stood behind them. Not for fear of repercussion or the possibility of meeting Jack’s arrogance and scorn. No, Will could handle Jack, he knew how to handle Jack.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>What he didn’t want to see countless times more in a day stood behind the man. A pale girl, barely on the verge of her sixteenth birthday, stark naked like the day she was born and a gaping empty hole in her chest where her heart used to be. </em>
</p>
<p>Will Graham has a gift; one that makes normal life extremely difficult and one that may be the end of him soon enough. Encouraged by a friend he seeks psychiatric help to alleviate his soul. Unfortunately, it’s October and very few things can help him now, least of all a psychiatrist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A very quick Halloween special I slapped together because there was a great need and it compelled me. It's short, finished and split in three part because reasons. Part two out tomorrow and part three out on Oct 1st. This has been an attempt at horror, I guess.

The last murders were wrong, all wrong. The first body was presented on a stage of antlers, the other mounted on the head of a stag and the third one had the horns protruding from their insides. It all felt like an elaborate warning and for once in his life Will was going to heed it.

It was a hard decision to make but he had to do it, Will had to do it for himself, his sanity, for his safety and his life. He couldn’t stand to look anymore. It wasn’t just the cold chills he felt while looking at the last few crime scenes, but everything else he saw as well. It had been piling on his shoulders all his life and made each day a dragging hell.

“I can’t do it anymore, Jack. I just can’t. I’m losing sleep and, worst of all, I think it’s chipping at my sanity. I can’t and I quit. I have to.”

Jack wasn’t happy with the news, and he wouldn’t be, for a while. Will was certain that understanding was just around the corner, that the man who was his boss, his friend, would understand in his own way why Will couldn’t do this anymore. Jack gave a tentative nod of acceptance, a promise not to call when more corpses piled in the Maryland region. And if Will had looked at his face he would have seen it, the glimmer of understanding, the way Jack watched his sleep deprived form with sympathy. But Will couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at many people in their eyes with what often stood behind them. Not for fear of repercussion or the possibility of meeting Jack’s arrogance and scorn. No, Will could handle Jack, he knew how to handle Jack.

What he didn’t want to see countless times more in a day stood behind the man. A pale girl, barely on the verge of her sixteenth birthday, stark naked like the day she was born and a gaping empty hole in her chest where her heart used to be. A two months old case; the parents were devastated, the perpetrator caught and Will was even at her funeral. But so was she. She didn’t move, she didn’t speak or breathe but her eyes, the spectral murky orbs void of life and existence, they followed Will. He could feel them on his back as he picked up his bag and left the office. Their eyes always followed him. Always.

The world was full of wondering souls, all of them left behind as products of violent death, unable to move on. But the last crimes he saw – there were no remains there, nothing left behind to haunt him. That was the warning he felt, a quiet trembling voice in the back of his head whispering _something took them, something ate them_.

If knowing truly was half the battle then Will should have felt good about it. Instead, knowing what ate them only served to further sap his sleeping.

Every year, every god damned year since he realised the shadows in the corners of his eyes weren’t tricks of the mind, it was becoming worse and worse. He would still recall his childlike fantasies that kept his father up by his bedside. He would recall them because now he knew they weren’t imaginings. The monsters he used to hear under his bed as a child were very real.

Late thirties and still alive to remember it, somehow. Will had all the intention of remaining alive. The first step was to distance himself from his secondary job. _The Corpse Whisperer._ Funny title, made some laughing rounds at the office and Will was always a good sport about it. It was a joke, for them. They didn’t know it was literal. They didn’t know the victims actually spoke to him, whispered terrible dreadful things in his ears and filled his mind with vividly rich details of their last moments. Will couldn’t count how many times he had felt choked, maimed, slashed and raped, all that compressed in seconds that turned his knees weak and nightmares colourful.

But it caught the bad guys, so that’s the only thing that mattered to Will.

Unfortunately his talent had a lasting effect on the quality of his life. What kept him up at night were the dead that just couldn’t leave. Stuck to him like glue, screaming in his ear expecting salvation, instead becoming his damnation. Victims, at the very least, weren’t violent. Saw too much of it in their last moments to inflict it. Others were a different story; stray wanderers his eyes would accidentally catch, or even worse – killers themselves. One this year had met face to face with the barrel of Will’s gun, and him overwhelmed by the victim’s pain and anguish. He pulled the trigger, thought he was damning the other and not himself. Wrong on all accounts. Thanks to that act of impulse he got himself violent housemates. Every few nights a new bruise would appear on him and he wouldn’t remember where he had gotten it but he knew how. He knew who left them there. There was barely room for guilt in him for taking a life, when the life he took made sure to leave marks on him. This year was morally a downward spiral and the approach of October did not help.

Cats, various books told him, were good for keeping the dead away. A damn shame he was not ready to part with his pack of strays for one edgy cat he didn’t even enjoy the company of. The dead couldn’t hurt him, not terminally. Not until that one day in the year that gave them too much power to break through the ether. That one day when the murderers and the murdered where hardly a thing to fear for Will because truer evil would rear its head and hunt. And not just for stray souls.

Demons, Will called them, mostly because he didn’t have a better name for what they were. Old souls turned rancid by some definitions, accumulated venom of society by others. Carnivores of the spirit land that crossed too freely into the living world. The creatures were solid darkness and frost, all sharp edges, lanky limbs and pointy claws with black scales for skin that stretched over a tall frame. They would come and go with the cold wind, ice running rampant in their veins. The sounds they made ranged from deafening roars to sinister hisses. A mockery of the human frame with horns and antlers that used to make noise under Will’s window when he was a child. The presence of his very Christian father scared them away back then, not so much the religion itself but the power of one’s faith.  These days what kept him safe were talismans and writings underneath the wallpaper.

None of that worked on All Hallows’ Eve, and the older he got the harder it was to keep himself safe. The dark things had an insatiable taste for people like Will, and something about October brought them all out in a hunting mood.

+++

“You were good, you were really good,” Alana raised her can of beer to meet Will’s. “They’re going to miss you.”

“I think they’ll miss my talent more than they’ll actually miss me.”

“Stop that,” she smacked him playfully on his arm. “You know damn well they liked you even in your gloomiest.”

“Now that,” he grinned and took a swing of the beer can, “is bullshit and you know it.”

She laughed but didn’t correct him, averted her eyes elsewhere until they caught sight of a pile of books with questionable titles by his bed.

“Still keeping up with that hobby, I see. The occult must make for a terrifying read before bedtime.”

“Ah, you know, keeps the mind entertained and off real problems like bills, papers that need grading and... and crime scenes.”

“That’s partially why I’m here, to be honest,” Alana grabbed a stray paper from the table and searched her bag for a pen. “I know it’s hard to look at something like that. I’ve seen it on you, I’ve seen it on plenty of people in this line of work. Sometimes all you need is a good talk.”

She wrote something on the piece of paper, folded it several times and slid it over to his side of the table with a smile so alike her. The helpful one, the one that tried to be the least condescending as possible while offering advice that shouldn’t be ignored.

“A friend of mine, great psychiatrist, excellent listener,” she could see on Will’s face that he was about to reject her offer so she kept talking instead of letting him have a word. “I’m not saying there’s something wrong with you. I’m not even saying this is something you need to do. But I want you to consider it anyway. It could, no, it would be good for you, to let it all off your chest.”

+++

It was only the mere beginning of October and Will was already feeling the dread of impending danger creep on him.  His teaching semester just started and days were getting shorter. Each late night drive from Quantico to Wolf Trap made him more and more jumpy. Will would love to blame it on his own panic, pretend like nothing was there. Unfortunately he knew better and the things he saw skitter close to the road from the pitch black woods, he knew those things weren’t his imaginations. Even in his house, in the comfort of his well lit home he would notice movement from the large windows aimed at the trees surrounding his house. He only wished he was so naive as to believe it was just an animal. But animals didn’t stalk on two legs; the look of them didn’t chill down the air in his home for several degrees. This particular set of antlers that haunted Will’s vision that evening had been his shadow for a long time now. Hardly the only one.

Alana was right, in a way. He needed to talk to someone. He wasn’t even sure how he’d go about talking about this to another person, but he needed to try. Will felt a true fear for his shambling mind one evening, just as October rolled in. The banging of open doors woke him, his own front door, and his house was filled with the smell of rotting leaves. In the morning he convinced himself he simply over reacted, that it could happen, that it was normal for a stressed out man to occasionally forget to lock his door. But deep down he didn’t, he knew he didn’t forget. He could never forget. The spur of the moment, the panic and the fear had him stumble that night all over his house in search of intruders. Instead he met with too many dead loitering still around his house with their gaping bleeding holes and their offset jaws and the maggots eating out their eyes. Will slept that night on a heap of blankets with his dogs and tried to find that note Alana gave him in the morning.

“Dr. Lecter’s office, how may I help you?”

Alana only left the phone number but no name on her note and Will had somehow imagined he’d be talking to a woman. Instead, a deep clearly foreign voice greeted him, a lot more fresh and awake than Will ever could hope to sound at 8 AM after barely four hours of sleep.

“Uhh, hi. A friend of mine, Alana Bloom, recommended I call this number in case I ever need a, uhh... A shrink, I’m looking for a shrink. Did I call the right number?”

An amused chuckle was heard on the other end of the line. “Will Graham I take it? Alana had told me about you, yes.”

Will wasn’t sure how but he got talked into morning coffee and a meeting with said _shrink_ , Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Maybe it was the desperation in his voice that gave the doctor thought Will would want a meeting soon. If so, the doctor would have been right.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The doctor’s house in Baltimore stood out like a sore thumb in the average looking neighbourhood - an antique richness two stories high that doubled as someone’s house and office. It stood out much like its owner; a tall European gentleman in a perfectly tailored maroon suit. He greeted Will with a welcoming smile and offered entrance. The man was at least ten years his senior but the age flattered him. The look of him fit with what Will heard over the phone. It fit with the look of the house too, inside and out – a museum of fine art with a perfect blend of furniture both modern and old. The room he took his patients in was no different, all warm tones and spacious with a high ceiling and rows upon rows of books. Will sat on his couch as he drank the coffee Dr. Lecter offered him, a dark and rich home blend. It did wonders to wake him up.

They settled a daily appointment at 7:30 PM.

“As for the fee...?” Will asked.

“I owe Alana a favour or two,” Will was about to jump in but Dr. Lecter just raised his hand in a stopping sign and Will eased back without saying a word before the doctor could finish. “I do not mind working pro bono for a friend. Though, if by the end of the month you find these meetings helpful, you may consider paying.”

The offer was fair and nothing Will could complain about. They shook on it and Will promised to come by that evening for their first session. He left hoping he’d still be here by the end of the month to pay the man.

+++

Will found himself on plenty of psychiatric couches as a child; not one he particularly enjoyed or felt was helpful. As soon as he sat in the patient’s armchair he had the memory of that repulsion creep in, even in spite of the doctor’s pleasantness. Will struggled with the start.

“The beginning,” Dr. Lecter offered, “start from the beginning.”

The beginning was a freaked out child standing on the river bank, playing with stick. No one so young should have seen something as horrifying as that. The sight of a man standing in the middle of a river burned itself into his eyelids. A bloated, naked corpse standing upright, flesh almost translucent and green. He tapped his soggy, melting face against Will’s window that evening and the young boy managed to make enough noise, rattle enough nerves with his frightened nonsense to have the adults search the river until they stumbled on the reeking remains. But even with a funeral the bloated man didn’t leave from his window. The doctor’s defined it as overly vivid imagination coupled with trauma. Something that would pass.

It didn’t pass for Will and only got worse. The more he tried to talk about this unwanted gift the more he met with suspicious gazes that deemed him either insane or a heathen. Louisiana was not a good place to grow up with these issues and he learned very quickly to keep his mouth shut. So it came as no surprise to Will, who felt his tongue chained by fear of rejection and dismissal, that the stories he told were tailored different from the truth.

“An empathy disorder, they called it. Turns out very useful in the field. I can get deep into the head of the victim, the killer, whoever. The problem is getting out, and what I end up with is a heap of paranoid delusions.”

Every story he had he tailored in a way that would omit the actual truth but relieve him enough of it that Will would feel a certain levity. It wasn’t much but it helped to speak of it even under the shroud of lies. He couldn’t speak of his hunters, though. There were no lies big enough to shroud that.

What Will didn’t expect was the doctor being a little too sharp for his forged tales and for him to find too many holes in his stories. He allowed Will a week of fallacies before he confronted him. He sat him on the settee and offered a cup of tea instead of the usual coffee. The doctor was awfully polite and made extra effort with all his patients, Will assumed. He was incredibly careful to grow a warm and comfortable atmosphere that would put him at ease as soon as he stepped foot in the office.

The fireplace was on that evening, casting a warm glow over the room. The doctor didn’t keep his professional distance. He sat next to Will on the settee and placed a hand around his shoulders with a firm grip.

“Will, you are not being very truthful with me. I gave you a week but you persisted with your stories. Now I think is the time you should start considering honesty.”

Will looked a little shocked, wanted to debunk the doctor but couldn’t, not when he saw the man’s kind smile. Reassuring and silencing in equal amounts.

“There is very little you can tell me that I would find weird, Will. Consider using the truth this time. I want to be able to help you.”

Will assumed once more this was how he was with all of his patients, but something in the doctor’s eyes made him reconsider. The man was either an incredibly good actor or Will had warmed to him a lot more than he previously considered. Few and far were the people in Will’s life that listened with such dedication, that offered him a place to unburden himself without mockery or fear.

 _He’s a psychiatrist. You’re paying him for this, or will pay him soon enough,_ Will reminded himself _._ He looked away shaking his head and felt the arm around him squeeze his shoulder. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to lean towards the man, close his eyes and rest in the makeshift safety of this room where all his troubles seemed to stop.

Now that... That would be inappropriate, much like the doctor’s comforting proximity. Will took his glasses off and rubbed his face while still shaking his head.

“You won’t believe a word of what I tell you, Dr. Lecter.”

“Try me,” he sat back in the settee, hand trailing down Will’s back before he set it over the backrest. He turned his torso towards Will and crossed his legs, listening, waiting.

They had their session right there, sitting next to each other. It took Will a long unhurried silence and an empty cup of tea to finally start talking without the guise of lies. His first words would be crucial but there was no way he could make them sound any less ludicrous.

“I have a connection with the, uhh... What haunts me are not hallucinations but... but remains born of a violent death. They just want to rest and I just want them to leave me alone.”

It was difficult for Will, but he said what he had to. He corrected the stories he gave the doctor previously and amended with details he left out. He told Dr. Lecter about the bloated man, about all the dead sticking to the walls of his house, about all the screamers and the victim that gave him too many details of their passing and about the perpetrators angry about their passing. Stones rolled off his shoulders like never before and Will looked forward even more to their sessions, to the drinks he would be offered and the lax atmosphere they would talk in. The patient’s chair remained empty for the foreseeable future as the two held their talks in more comfort, like old friends. The doctor did not disappoint Will in his patience. In fact, he had to apologise several times for what he considered rude interruptions with curious questions.

Dr. Lecter was incredibly accepting of all he heard and most interested in the details of this unique word Will saw that no one else did. He questioned for a lot of details but did not question Will’s truthfulness. Sometimes he would lift the sleeves of Will’s shirt and examine bruises with scrutiny. They were the least of Will’s problems, hardly even in the top ten, but he allowed the doctor to treat them and took quiet pleasure in the gentile movement of the doctor’s fingers over his skin.

Of all the things he told the doctor, a few he still kept avoiding because how does one even begin to talk about the fear of their own impending death?

+++

It was the October 25th when Will knocked unannounced on the front door of Hannibal Lecter’s house. Every window he looked out that day showed him something he didn’t want to see move in the distance. Showed him something that made his heart strain and bones chill. Even his drive out of Baltimore had loud shadows tailing his car until he made the impulse turn towards Dr. Lecter’s house.

Seven more days. He could keep quiet about it no longer.

The doctor was surprised by his visit, perhaps even mildly annoyed, but Will left all of his manners in the car when he ran out towards the door and banged on them like his life depended on it. It was impossible for Dr. Lecter to be a poor host even interrupted and in the middle of preparing supper. He offered Will a seat in the kitchen and poured him scotch for the nerves. He fiddled for a moment with the pans but soon left them to the heat and took his own seat with a glass of wine next to Will.

“Are you being followed by someone?”

“ _Thing_. Some _thing._ And plural at that,” Will had never drank scotch so fast. His eyes drifted towards the kitchen window and for once that day he saw nothing odd on the other end. It gave him the strength he needed to chain his anxiety and mould his tongue into a tool for stringing words, not gibberish.

“I’m not very optimistic about my survival this year,” Dr. Lecter’s eyes squinted at those words. He asked nothing and only refilled Will’s glass, leaving him to shed light on the last of his omissions.

“They’ve been around me for a long time, longer than I can truly remember. And each year they get bolder. I’ve counted three so far. Three fiendish creatures I can’t quite explain but their ilk keeps this world from overpopulating with the remains of the dead. They have a taste though, and they really want my remains.

“Last year one of them, with the horns of a ram, got so close I thought myself dead ten times over before dawn. I held it by its frigid horns and pushed it back with my eyes closed. You can’t look at those things for too long, it’s just... My hands were in bandages for day from frostbite and I don’t even know how I managed to stop it from breaking through the doors of my bedroom, but I did. Few years before a different one, with bull horns, left marks on the outside of my house that I spent days fixing. This year I don’t think I’ll be that lucky mostly because... mostly because of the third one.

“Antlers, that one has antlers. And for the longest time the only thing it did was stalk. Endlessly, endlessly stalk all year round! The other two, they rear their ugly heads around October. This one? This one stayed like a shadow and never did a damn thing. Until now. Until I saw corpses left in the fields, mounted on stag heads. Nothing about those kills felt natural, or human. And there were no remains to talk to.

“I still don’t know what it means but back then it felt like a warning, like the thing was done playing games and ready to act. Like it could have acted all along but it chose this year to finally leave its mark and I...  I don’t want to disappear.”

Dr. Lecter listened but there was a feeling of absence in his look and Will knew he couldn’t understand. He shook his head and buried his face into his palms.

“You don’t get it, you can’t. I know what it sounds like but I can’t even put into words such things, the unimaginable terror they come with. God, my heart, it feels like it would stop if I stared at them for too long...”

Dr. Lecter took hold of his wrists and removed the hands Will covered his face with, revealing blood shot eyes fighting the urge of tears.

“No Will, I do understand. A lot better than you may think.”

A long, long time ago, there was a little girl with a vivid imagination. It made her parent worry, but through the years their worry turned to a bother and they no longer wanted to indulge her little whims. Not her brother, though. He loved her dearly and would be her prince for as long as she needed him. And she needed him so often to soothe her nightmares away, to scare away the dead that hung upside down from her ceiling. Her brother was always there for her but in truth he did not believe her. He listened to her stories, to her fantastic mind painting dark strange things into reality, but he did not believe. And one night, on that one night she claimed to need him most, he failed to listen to her please. A ten year old girl, surely she would be fine if only for a few hours. Her brother, too old for babysitting had engagements elsewhere, friends waiting. He should have listened to her, should have believed. Whether it could or it couldn’t be considered his fault didn’t matter; the boy felt guilty. When he found her lifeless body hiding in the closet he felt utterly at fault. _Her heart simply stopped,_ they told him. A strange phenomenon for a healthy child. But now he knew better, unfortunately too late. The strange dark things took his sister and a cold winter nested in his heart, growing, growing. Growing.

Will Graham listened to the confession and it was either the cup of freshly made tea he got that placated him or the sound of Dr. Lecter’s voice. But even with his eyes barely functioning, he begged to go home.

“Not safe, nowhere safe...” he drawled and barely made two steps when arms caught him before he fell. He lost consciousness in them and slept a deep undisturbed sleep on the doctor’s living room couch.

Hannibal Lecter watched over him with a serene smile for the entirety of the night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The attempt at horror continues. One more to go!


	3. Chapter 3

Will didn’t call in sick for the week, though maybe he should have. His thoughts were unsettling to be around and work kept him busy. A classroom full of students tended to blind one of all the problems waiting outside. Most of his, for better or worse, came down to ugly thoughts of time running out. He stopped wearing a watch; the ticking sound was driving him crazy.

Dr. Lecter had offered his home on the 31st but Will was sceptical about inviting danger to the man’s house. He shouldn’t have been. He should have used that head of his to think about all the things that didn’t make any sense. Instead he smiled and enjoyed the way this man’s company made him feel... normal. The other side of Dr. Lecter’s offer he didn’t refuse. He didn’t necessarily approve either, but left the option open to the doctor. Will didn’t feel too good about it, though. It was the 31st and, quite frankly, he did not feel good about inviting someone into his house on that day. He feared for the doctor’s safety.

Sometimes the simplest things could elude us; clues hiding in plain sight we chose to ignore. The heart tends to drum a story differently than the mind, and louder. Even the most analytical minds could fall prey to such traps because kindness was blinding and affections twice so.

Will stopped his car in front of his house, turned the engine off and the headlights but did not exit. Barely 7 PM and the sky was already dark with clouds and the long set sun. No stars tonight, no moon either but he didn’t need that kind of light to see the front door of his house open. No lights shone inside his house, no sound was heard either, not even the rustling of leaves as the wind turned still with suspense. Will didn’t dare leave his car, not that the casket of metal could somehow protect him. He was about to call someone, 911 maybe or Dr. Lecter even. Driving away was also an option however futile but the phone rang in his hands and a lovely woman unwittingly reminded him of the hopelessness this evening had in store for him.

A murmur of voices was the backdrop of Alana’s call. It sounded much like a party and she did extend the offer to Will almost immediately. He refused with a few polite words and tried hard not to hang up on her. All of his senses were focused on the open door of his house. Nothing moved inside and he worried about his dogs.

“I was just talking with Du Maurier and she tells me you haven’t called her yet. Please don’t tell me you threw the number away.”

The strangeness of that sentence shook Will out of focus for a moment. What the hell was Alana talking about?

“Bedelia Du Maurier? The number I gave you, remember?” Her laugh sounded a little tipsy. “You didn’t even open it did you? Well I hope you at least have it still. You really should give her a call.”

A trapped scream perched itself under Will’s chin. He threw together a hasty good-bye, said his dogs were making a ruckus and hung up the call. For the longest moment he sat still in his car, petrified by disbelief and fear in equal amounts. He dialled a number he had recently grown very accustomed to, hoping and dreading he’d hear a ring from the inside of his house. No such luck, not yet at least.

“I am on my way. Is something wrong?” Dr. Lecter sounded worried and hearing it felt like acid was dropped on Will’s open wounds. _Why did you lie to me,_ Will swallowed down the arbitrary question. As if he’d get an answer. As if any answer would be satisfactory.

“Will?” the voice came again from the phone, worried still and a curious little impulse had him move the device away from his ear to check the call. Awareness was a marvelous thing; there were no numbers dialed, there wasn’t even an established call yet the concerned voice kept coming from his phone.

“My house has been broken into,” Will’s voice was unnaturally calm as he took the phone back to his ear. “I was going to call you for help, you know. Well played.”

Not even a moment passed before whatever he talked to caught on to Will’s words and asked “Are you angry, Will? You sound angry.” The question came out playful and it only stung worse.

Will’s voice dropped to a whisper as he said, “I’m actually sadder, if you can believe it.”

“Cruel games, _doctor_ , too cruel. Was an outright attack below you? Or would that just be too quick a way to go?” Will’s voice reached a tone higher, his teeth clenched. “Playing with your food doesn’t suit the image you’ve crafted.”

The silence of the night broke with a dog’s pleading bark that drew Will’s hand to grab the car’s door.

“Drive away,” said the voice over the phone Will could no longer recognize. “You are being baited.”

“Good,” Will snarled as he exited the vehicle and added, “your loss,” before tossing the phone aside and slamming the door shut.

He had spent most of that year fearing this night and what it would mean for him, so much that along the way he reach a sort of acceptance of the inevitable. Will just didn’t expect this much ache in the process, and he certainly didn’t expect his dogs to receive punishment in his stead. He couldn’t live with that.

He walked slowly towards the porch, didn’t even step on it and instead watched it from a safe distance. Watched the darkness inside his house. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound until the moment it did. Scratching, quickening noises of glass breaking and limbs cracking signalled a fleeting second before something massive broke through the window and into his car, flipping it over with inhuman ease. All of Will’s thoughts came to a grinding halt as he saw a black bony creature with the horns of a ram claw its way out of the metal shell of his car.

Will ran as fast as he could, the last of his survival instinct kicking in. He didn’t dare turn his head; the noises he heard from afar as the creature’s claws broke stone and earth to get to him were enough. He knew he wouldn’t get far but still he ran as fast as his legs would take him, until the wet soggy ground beneath him wobbled. Will tripped over himself in his great speed and rolled down a slope of collapsed earth. The descent was painful and he heard something break more then he felt, but the landing was the worst, when his head hit a rock and his vision blurred. Will tried to get up, to move, to craw, anything at all than just lay still on his back and wait for the creature to jump him. His limbs sparked to life when even through the fog in his eyes he saw a tall shape edge slowly towards him. It looked like a man in a long tan coat, but the closer the shape got the more his image kept distorting from man to beast, from familiar human shapes to sharp-edged bones dipped in black. A constant remained, a constant that had him crawling backwards away from the hand that extended towards him. If all else was haze in Will’s eyes, the antlers certainly weren’t and he took to begging before a cold scaly hand closed over his mouth.

“Shh. Sleep.”

The voice was painfully familiar and Will lost vision to the smell of rotting leaves.

+++

Will woke on the same couch he fell asleep on some seven days ago with a headache that cleaved his skull in two. He sat up slow and with much pain in his limbs, but the sight of the doctor rewired all of his pain receptacles. Will jumped off the couch, far away from the man standing close and watching over him with a morsel of a smile. The room spun wildly and Will only stopped himself from tumbling when he grabbed the armrest of another chair close by. He felt the back of his head as the pulsing just wouldn’t quit and the fingers he pulled back were painted red. A broken noise left him when he saw what damage was done. He needed a doctor, a real one.

“You are fine, Will,” the creature that wore the flesh of a man spoke to him with a distinguished human voice. But truth made Will less blind and his eyes could not consolidate the mask it wanted him to see and the jagged blackness of its antlers, the jutting bones of its face a moment human and a moment not.

Will scrambled for the closest door when his knees stopped shaking. They slammed in his face when he got close enough and would not relent to his pulling. The windows grew darker, the shades closed, curtains pulled and the outside world was closed off.

“No, no, no—” a sob escaped him as he continued to pull the tightly sealed door, awareness of his plight coming to him in cold waves.

“It is the outside that poses a danger for you. You are safe here. You are fine.”

The voice moved until it stood behind him and Will finally shattered like a dropped piece of china. His sobs came out unrestrained and scalding tears streamed down his face after decades of repression. He would have met the floor with his knees had arms not grabbed him from behind and cradled tightly.

The body his back was pressed against was warm, chest heaving with breath, heart beating. Hands held him in a firm but soft way, voice gently chiding _Everything is fine._ Will only cried harder when he heard the tender tone. What a convincing imitation. It buried its deceptively human nose into Will’s curls and inhaled his scent deeply while Will empty his sorrow. Only when his trembling stopped, when Will had no more tears in him, did it speak again.

“Every ounce of my being screams to devour you, but I have made a sport of defying nature. Eternity, Mr. Graham, is a dull place. An empty and lonely one too.”

A very human hand moved to wipe the remains of Will’s tears from his eyes as his whimpers became more controlled and eventually died down completely. “Why?” he asked.

“Will to power,” what called itself Dr. Lecter chuckled. “You have earned your name. So many years of keeping them at bay, and with what? Nothing but your name... It is not something you see often. Especially not last year’s performance. I was certain you would not live to see morning. And yet...”

It swayed with gentle movement, amused by its own words or perhaps by the memory it was exploring. Will squeezed his eyes shut, biting back the sadness that threatened to pour out again the more this thing exercised its warped sense of desire.

“You have had my curiosity for a long time, but with that show you earned my respect.”

Will laughed, dry and breathless, as the hands left him to stand on his own. “What are you?” he asked without turning.

“What did your books tell you?”

“Many things.”

“Which did you like best?”

“...Rancid souls?”

“Close enough.”

Will turned to look at him then and it was easier this time, knowing his position. His eyes still chose to see double, momentarily a kind human face and then one that simply defied reason with its visage. His mind recalled the last time he was in this living room and the heartfelt story the _doctor_ chose to share with him. Maybe some of it was actually true. Maybe the face wasn’t a lie but an old memory. Maybe the name truly belonged to someone. Maybe the story of that little girl was not a cruel twisted tale from a monster’s point of view.

So many straws for Will to grasp and he needed all of them not to break in a second wave of grief.

Hannibal Lecter extended his hand, palm side up, and waited for Will to decide after hearing his offer. “Would you like to grow a pair of your own horns, Will?” He added for further incitement, “You may yet pet your dogs again.”

“You make it sound like I have a choice in the matter.”

“There is always a choice,” Dr. Lecter pointed out, hand still extended and waiting. “It just so happens that yours are currently very limiting. If survival is in your interest, it would be a poor choice to leave my side. On this night most of all.”

The door behind Will clicked open, curtains slowly pulled back. The outside was visible again and Will had a choice. He worried his lower lip to the point of bleeding as he watched down the hallway the front door of this house, if it was even a house at all. But Will didn’t want to disappear and the hand he took was not nearly as cold as it should have been

+++

Alana paid Will a visit in the late afternoon of November 1st. She couldn’t see his car as she drove towards his property. The door to his house was wide open, window broken, no light on and not a soul in sight. Inside a few things turned over but otherwise everything was still and quiet. It all felt very wrong and made her nervous. She walked out on the porch calling out to Will several times while she fiddled with her phone. She did not get a response from him, instead she heard dogs bark in the distance. With a hurried step she followed the barking and as she followed, she noticed deep footprints in the mud.

The barking and the footprints brought her to a small slope where the sight of the dogs had her in wailing tears. They were gathered around their master, trying to wake him up with their unhappy whines. Will lay dead, a halo of crimson around his head where his skull cracked against sharp rock.

_Eternity was a lonely place no longer._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes the attempt at horror. I hereby extend a formal apology to Nietzsche for using one of his concepts in such a blatantly silly way ([x](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power)). The character death tag was purposefully omitted for obvious reasons, I'm sure. Also that last segment with Alana was probably the worst thing I've ever written in my life, jfc I hate character death so much ;~;
> 
> Hope all ye who entered enjoyed this little spooky story as much as I had fun writing it. Many thanks for reading and here's hoping I have more such brainstorms! :D

**Author's Note:**

> Pardon any odd mistakes; dyslexia.


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